Filius Est Pars Patris
by Harpokrates
Summary: A son is part of the father. In the dark and the rain, history is forever changed.


Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.

-Sun Tzu

* * *

It was dark, and as quiet as it ever got on Motherbase. The distant clanking of heavy machinery rumbled through the platform, up into the barracks and rattled the thin metal legs of the bunks. Eli rolled onto his stomach on the scratchy wool and stuffed his pillow over his head.

Everything stank like saltwater and dead fish. He tossed the pillow to the foot of his bed and twisted over, kicking his legs against the railing on the bunk.

"Shh," Ralph hissed. Eli glared into the darkness above his head, sat up as much as he was able, and bodily threw himself onto the mattress. The entire frame rocked.

"Knock it off, Eli," one of the other boys whined.

"Are you going to make me?" Eli leaned over the side of the railings and squinted in the direction of the voice. Charl, probably; he was the biggest crybaby. "Baby, brat."

"Eli, you aren't in charge anymore," Ralph kicked the bottom of Eli's mattress, "leave him alone."

Eli reached out for the knife he kept tucked between the corner of his mattress and the bed frame. He held it tightly, the folded, blunt edges and plastic casing digging into his palm, creaking with pressure.

"Are you going to make me?"

"No," came a little voice from the far corner. Swahili accent, it was Bonte. "Big Boss will."

Eli jumped out of his bunk and hit the ground with a thud. Bonte was too little to climb into the upper bunks, so he was stuck on the ground level, in a bed that came up to Eli's knees.

"What did you say?" He kicked at the mattress frame. Bonte poked his head out and glared at him, his baby-fat cheeks puffed out in anger.

"You lied to us. I heard Commander Ocelot. He said you aren't Big Boss's son."

Eli kicked the mattress again.

"He's wrong!" But he could hear the denial in his own voice. "I am!"

"If you aren't his son, we don't have to listen to you," Ralph called from across the room.

"Shut up, Ralph!" Eli flicked the knife open with his thumb. "Shut up -all of you!"

"Hey!"

Eli jumped, and the entire room hushed. One of the Diamond Dogs, a military looking man with a forgettable face, leaned into the room.

"Shut up in there, will ya?" He knocked sharply against the metal door, heaving a tired sigh. "Damn kids."

Eli stayed quiet and still until he left. Then he leveled the knife at Bonte.

"I could kill you," he promised quietly, "I could do it right now."

"Go away, Eli," Ralph threw a pillow at his feet, "no one wants to listen to you anymore."

Vague, sleepy noises of assent murmured from the shadows of the room. Eli looked around, saw the glittering eyes casting judgement on him from the dark. His lip curled. He could do it; he could drive the knife right into Bonte's stupid little throat.

Eli stamped his feet and stormed out of the room, flipping his knife shut and shoving in his pocket as he went.

He had to squint when he stepped into the bright, white halls. The fluorescent lights reflected off of the polished floors, off the metal framework that lay exposed by a shortage of drywall. The hall was empty; no soldiers pacing through the base in fits of insomnia, no guards making sure they wouldn't try to escape. The Diamond Dogs had stopped surveillance on them sometime during the second month at Motherbase, after they set up a provisional school to teach them how to read and speak English. Eli never let on that he could read, and had been able to since he was a toddler, instead preferring to soar ahead of the rest of his little army. To prove his worth on and off the battlefield. Big Boss said he had to use his head, after all.

And so it was his head that lead him outside, into the cool, faintly muggy air. There was only so much he could get away with, after all. Occasional fights with Etepe and the others were overlooked -they all got into fights, and with the books he stole from that crippled engineer, he was quickly coming to realize that PTSD could help him get away with more than he should. Still, outright stabbing Bonte in the middle of the barracks, that was pushing the adult's placid, stupid trust in him too far.

They tortured people here, the same way he had seen the LRA guerrillas do. The cages, the electricity -that room they all piled in, when Big Boss first brought him here, where Ocelot had asked him about Cipher, about his father, Eli could smell the blood, sunken deep into the rivets and the seams of the metal floor. Had someone ever died in that chair? At the time it seemed like a reasonable question. A week in, living at Motherbase, he realized that of course someone had died. That was what these people were like.

It was raining. Fat droplets of water clattered against the deck. Eli wiped his hair back, away from his face. The rain on his face was faintly annoying, but nothing like the horrible, bubbling rage fermenting under his ribs. He clawed at his shirt, some oversized general issue they gave all of his soldiers to sleep in, over his chest.

"What are you doing outside?"

The voice caught him by surprise, and Eli spun around on one foot, pulling his knife out as he went. He caught a flash of red out of the corner of his perpherials.

"Put that away," Big Boss stared down at him, his one eye gleaming, "I told you not to draw a weapon on a fellow soldier."

Eli sneered at him.

"I don't have to listen to you!"

Big Boss looked vaguely tired. He was wearing BDUs, like always; this time the ones with the permanent rusty splatter of blood near the collar. As much as the children on base loved him, like the spineless idiots they were, there had always been rumors about Big Boss: that he was the Devil come to punish Skullface for killing their parents. His horn, the piece of shrapnel lodged in his forehead, did nothing to dissuade the speculation.

Eli knew though. Big Boss was just a man. And all men could be killed.

"A good son would obey his father. A good soldier obeys his CO."

Eli could feel his face contort with rage. It felt like a punch to the gut.

"I don't need you!" Big Boss came closer and Eli swiped at him with a unsteady punch. "I never needed you!"

"Then why come here, huh?" Big Boss circled around him, prowling like some animal.

"I'm going to be greater than you! Greater than you ever were!" Eli palmed his knife, the heady weight of it urging him on, "you're just a relic, just an old man! You rotted in your coma and you made me like this and I _hate you_!"

Eli dashed at him, landing an open palmed slap on his face. Big Boss' head twitched, ever so slightly, to the side from the force.

Big Boss shoved him away, hard. Eli stumbled back, and his shoulders hit the railing on the edge of Motherbase. Circling around each other, they had twisted away from the barrack door, towards the helipad.

"Come on, then," he dropped into a CQC stance, "fight me. You want to be a soldier so bad? Prove it."

"Bastard!" Eli jumped at him, flicking open his knife mid-leap. Big Boss dodged back, caught him in the stomach with a low uppercut. Eli wheezed and stumbled away, trying to keep from retching. The knife clattered to the ground.

"Come on, Nyoka ya Mpembe," Big Boss lashed out with his foot, just grazing Eli's knee, "Show me you're worth something!"

Eli swung at him again, ducking under Big Boss' outstretched arms. The man caught the blow in his sternum and twisted his arm under Eli's, catching him under his armpit and forcing his arm behind his head. Eli hissed in pain as his arm was bent back. He let himself be pushed so he was standing perpendicular to Big Boss, then kicked out at Big Boss' crotch.

Big Boss blocked the kick with his knee and threw him to the ground. Eli hit the concrete shoulder first, and had to bite back a screech of pain as his arm very distinctly dislocated.

You're pathetic," Big Boss' boot caught him sharply in the ribs, "you can't be my son; you're worthless."

"I'm not," Eli wheezed, "I'll prove it to you!"

He pushed himself up on his good arm and lunged for his pocket knife. He had it, almost, then Big Boss' heavy boot came smashing down on his wrist. Eli shrieked.

"Don't try it," Big Boss pressed harder, forcing Eli to let go. He picked up the knife and tossed it away.

"You aren't my son, Nyoka ya Mpembe; you're just lying to yourself." Big Boss dropped to his knee on Eli's chest. Eli could hear the bones creaking. "They don't respect you anymore. They never did."

Eli struggled, grabbing Big Boss' knee and trying to push it away. The back of his shirt and his shorts were soaked through from the wet concrete.

"You're a liar, Nyoka ya Mpembe. You know what we do to liars."

Big Boss grabbed his throat and squeezed. Eli flailed desperately, but Big Boss just pushed his knee harder into Eli's chest. Faintly, and then all at once he felt the pain of his collarbone snapping. Light felt fuzzy and distant, but below that, below the desperate struggle against Big Boss, something was wrong. It niggled at the back of his mind.

"Nyoka ya Mpembe," Big Boss was saying, in a low drone, over and over again. Nyoka ya Mpembe. It was the name he called himself, the one they had taken from him. His soldiers knew it, some of the Diamond Dogs knew it, but Big Boss had never bothered to learn. This wasn't Big Boss.

Eli saw the same flash of red, not the muggy slick fogging the sides of his vision, but bright, vibrant. He pulled Big Boss' hands down, just a centimeter, just enough, and inhaled.

"You aren't real!" Eli sobbed. "You aren't real!"

And then he wasn't.

Eli rolled over, gasping desperately for breath. His vision was blurry, spotty even, like a dark tunnel was forming around his eyes. Sound seemed far away. He noticed vaguely that his arm was fine, not dangling uselessly, but instead still popped in place in his shoulder. The same went for his collarbone. The crushing feeling of being choked by his own shattered bones was gone.

Something tapped him on the shoulder. A hand, encased in thick canvas.

He slapped it away and scrabbled to his feet. His knife was, he squinted for the telltale sheen in the dark with no sucess, gone, probably tossed into the ocean by Big Boss, who wasn't really Big Boss at all. Standing up was a mistake. His head rolled back against his shoulder, like he was a bobble-head toy. His knees quivered, once, before he tumbled to the concrete.

A pair of feet entered into the small cone of vision he had left. He knew he must have been hallucinating, then, because those feet were hovering a foot off the ground.

Eli stayed kneeling on the ground, sagged against a pylon until he could blink without having to struggle to open his eyes. Then he looked up.

A boy, with fiery red hair, was floating gently in front of him. He looked like a monster from Eli's comic books back in England, in his gas mask and psychopath's straitjacket. The distant crackle of thunder rumbled through Motherbase.

"Impundulu…" the word fell heavily from his tongue, something that the Zulu kids on Motherbase whispered about whenever it stormed. Some monster, a lightning bird. Eli could see it in the strange boy, in the long sleeves that fluttered like wings, in the beaky gas mask filter.

The boy -the impundulu- floated closer, gliding through the air like it was water, like it was space.

"Get away from me!" Eli could hear his voice crack. He kicked at the phantom, who vanished into mist and reappeared to the right of Eli's leg. A bolt of lightning split the sky behind him and thunder rumbled in its wake.

He hovered closely, so closely Eli could see his eyes reflected in the lenses of the gas mask. Then he drew his hands in front of him.

"My knife?" Eli whispered. It was; it had the same scuffed frame, the same Sharpie drawing of a snake on the blade.

The boy pushed it towards him, sending it floating on air across the small gap between them. Eli snatched it out of the air. When he squeezed it in his hand, the frame creaked.

"This is real?" He demanded.

The floating boy tilted his head, then nodded.

"And my father, Big Boss -was he just a dream?" Eli reached out and tugged lightly on the trailing straps from the boy's straitjacket. "Did you do that, too?"

The phantom twisted around him, and floated off, between stacks of crates and barrels.

"Hey!" Eli pushed himself up on unsteady legs and stumbled after the boy, using the railing as support. "Come back!"

He was burning, burning like he hadn't since Bwala ya Masa. Even with his dizzy head and colt legs, he felt alive. It might have even been hope.

The boy was hovering just off the ground, staring at one of the posters plastered onto the walls of the base.

Eli cleared his throat.

"I'm Nyo- I'm Eli. Who are you?"

The boy stared at him, blankly through the eyes of his gas mask. He tapped the wall he was hovering next to three times.

"You're… three?"

The boy hovered closer to him, and gave off the vague impression of being pleased. He reached out a hand, covered by an overlarge sleeve, and touched Eli's forehead.

"Tretij Rebenok." Eli stumbled over the words, then paused. "You, you told me that? You put it in my mind?"

The boy nodded.

Eli looked down, his eyes darting as he thought. This was… this was huge. A real psychic! He could, he could…

"We can kill Big Boss."

Tretij shrank back.

"No!" Eli grabbed the end of his sleeve, "you have to help me!"

His hand closed on black mist and smoke. Eli cursed.

"I didn't mean to scare you." He called out. "I just need your help."

He caught a glimpse of red out of the corner of his eyes and turned around. Tretij hovered sheepishly a foot away.

"Don't worry," Eli held up his hands and put on his nicest smile, "I'm not going to hurt you. Here, I can," he batted through his pockets and felt dense wool. He sighed through his nose, "I can give you this."

He held out his beret. Tretij floated closer, so his feet were almost touching the ground.

"It's from the first man I killed," Eli boasted, "an airman, back in England, He had a gun and he couldn't even hit me. It's yours if you help me. He's a liar and a monster. You've been inside my mind; you know what he's like.

They stood across from each other in the rain, a dirty scrub kid with bleached out hair and a dark phantom, a psychic child gussied up like a madman on halloween, both with bare feet and damp clothes.

"Help me kill Big Boss."

Tretij Rebenok took the beret, and vanished.

* * *

Notes:

Nyoka ya Mpembe is Lingala for 'White of Snake' when translated literally, but it means White Mamba, Eli's 'code name'. Lingala is a Bantu language spoken mostly in the Congo region. I assume that the rest of what the child soldiers are speaking is Lingala as well, but I'm not fast enough to transcribe a language I don't know.

The game places Eli and his band of tiny children in Central Africa, which is a region, not a country, unless the developers meant to say the Central African Republic. I originally had them in Mozambique, as it had a civil war going on in the 80's, documented use of child soldiers, and has been featured in previous MG games, but I disregarded this to stay in line with canon. I believe they're supposed to be in Angola.

MPLA= People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola. One of the combatants in civil war in Angola, and also fighting against UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) who used child soldiers. The MPLA was accused of several human right's violations.

Impundulu is a South African mythological creature, a bit like a thunderbird. I figure Eli can know about it because I'm fairly sure that Big Boss is picking up child soldiers from more than one geological location.


End file.
